A major component of Internet Explorer is being disabled. Following their recent decision to disable the ability to send logins and password via a URL, Microsoft has continued tightening security on their browser by taking out the ability to run Active X scripts. I'm sure this is going to have a few webmasters scrambling for alternatives.

News.com reported today that Microsoft just "announced that the coming Windows XP Service Pack 2, which is focused on security, will allow consumers to block both pop-up ads and ActiveX scripting."

While this action should close a lot of security holes with Internet Explorer, I'll defer judgement on their update until I see how they implement it. If if requires the user to turn off the popups and Active X scripting themselves as opposed to turning them back on, then the update will be a failure.

A better option for users would be to download and install the FireFox (used to be Firebird) browser.